A psychological sandwich

I am my mother’s daughter. When I was in my early twenties, when I first began to develop a will of my own, when I first discovered the thrill of rebellion and quietly thumbed my nose at my mother’s religiosity and what I then saw as her prudery, and began to favour the company of men – what I have called my ‘promiscuous’ years – my mother took to writing me letters.

My mother writes letters still even though we live less than twenty kilometers apart. She writes to all her children as a means of stating her case.

My mother’s letters to me are ‘psychological sandwiches’. They begin with protests of her love for me. The middle carries the sting. What do you think you are doing? Who do you think you are? Behaving so loosely with men. Where are your morals?

Then she might end the letter with a short vignette: her memory of me as a little girl in a yellow jumper and tartan skirt, after she had come home from hospital with my new baby sister, when I was less than two years old and had been left in the care of my godparents, the Kaandorps, for over a week.

In her letter my mother remembers me then as the little girl who threw herself into her mother’s arms and wept for the sheer joy of being together again. If only, my mother writes, if only she could give to me now the things I needed then. It is as if she wishes that I had never grown up, that I had never entered into the world of adulthood, of conflict and of challenge. If only I had stayed little, then our bond might be secure.

I have been reading Nancy Miller’s Bequest and Betrayal:memoirs of a parent’s death, a book about adult children who write about their parents after death. Are these memoirs eulogies, songs of praise for parents now gone, or are they betrayals of parental secrets?

I suspect I could not write about my father as I do now were he not dead. Now he is dead, I am safe.

Will the way I write about my mother change after her death? My mother in my mind has undergone so many metamorphoses, from the woman I adored as a small child to the woman I became scornful of, though not in adolescence, even in adolescence I felt protective of her and needy, to the frail old woman she has finally become, of whom I feel protective in a different way. It took a long time before I dared to feel critical of my mother in any way.

It was later in my life, in my twenties and thirties when I had embarked on my analysis, only then did my image of my mother start to crack. Only then did I come to feel critical of her, for her religious intolerance, her manipulative tendencies, and her tendency to pretend that all is well when it is not.

I have my mother’s name, all three names, Elisabeth Margaretha Maria. It is a Dutch tradition to name the second daughter after the mother, and the first daughter after the mother’s mother, a tradition that again alerts us to the significance of mothers in a woman’s life.

I did not name my first daughter after my mother or any of my daughters directly after me, but my husband insisted and I agreed to the idea that they should all have my name as a second name. Equality you might say. Their first names however belong entirely to them.

Even now I can imagine my daughters writing in the future about what it means to them to each share their mother’s name between their first and last names.

In my family of origin, we each bear the name Maria, another tradition, religious this time, a means of asking the Blessed Virgin Mary to look over us all. All except the oldest, who again according to Dutch tradition was given his father’s name in its entirety.

When we were little we laughed at the fact that even the boys carried the name Maria in their collection of personal names, Simon Peter Maria, Franciscus Wiro Maria, Michael George Maria and Gregory Paul Maria. Such odd names they seemed to us growing up in Australia in the fifties and sixties when most people’s names were Celtic and Anglo Saxon with the odd immigrant name from the Mediterranean or Europe thrown in for good measure.

Names matter, they are identifying features, they become part of our sense of ourselves and of our identity.

In the days when I fancied I might write a book in which I had hoped each of my siblings might contribute a chapter, I also imagined a paragraph on each of us, suggesting parallels between our first given name and the way in which our name reflects our personalities.

As usual I am running off into too many ideas, too many ideas to follow. One leads into the other and the track becomes unwieldy. It is difficult to back track to where we have come from. Sorry.

74 thoughts on “A psychological sandwich”

does there exist a more complex relationship than that of mother and daughter? Oh my. My eldest is having a baby this summer, and she'll begin the other side of her mother-daughter experience. At 54, I will become a grandmother, and I'm still working out what my role as a mother has been, is now, and will be in the future.

I have given it my best, and will continue to do so. But sometimes…I want to run away.

Yes, I am trailing off following the path you have chosen, swaying with you on it. I relate to it, mostly, not about the motherly names, but about the parents. I was not free to do certain things until my parents were gone, for fear of hurting them. Like not going to church.

Names are important, and especially so if we ascribe importance to them. I think there are beautiful ways to do this, and I am in that happy state of witnessing my daughter contemplating child names as she hopes to start a family soon. There is so much more to naming a child than liking a name!

the perceptual attachments that accrue to the weight of names has been a source of fascination to me since i realized that family tradition drove the first three letters of my middle name – "gar" – i hadn't thought of the significance of names until i realized that relatively tiny feature of my life. the burden and the elevation that can come through a name is powerful and lifelong. it is also a connection through to people long flown away or to be becoming. steven

Much food for thought here, as usual, E. I can sympathize with the changing relationship of mother and daughter. I too feel I have gone from protective to rejecting back to protective again now that my mother is in her 80s. I think too that I have a much more rich and complex idea of who she is now that the clashes of our often unfair mutual expectations of each other no longer define who we are and how we interact. We've become friends, and as friends are more forgiving of each others' failings. Perhaps in youth we turn our parents into ideals of good or evil, and only later allow them to be human. So too, I think my mother has finally stopped placing all her hopes and sense of her own success on whether I turned out well or not, and is just happy I am who I am.

Sad sentence this one: 'Now he is dead, I am safe.' The article is about your mother but it's this that resonates with me most.

Back to mothers. I've only recently kinda sorta put issues I had with my mother to rest inside my head but just as I'd convinced myself that this was so, the same issues arose between her and my daughter…. At least it was a hurt and a bewilderment I could understand and help her with.

Regardless of name or mothers, we each need our individuality beyond the scopes in which we grew up in. we all grow and change, or should at least, and with that relationships change even if only one person changed. it is a natural process but whether we choose or allow ourselves the change is another question. BE who you are in the moment and as the ebb & flow of life changes, go with or against it as your individual right. Change is hard but always good. Give yourself a new name if need be to expand your expressions. I got Kbear from a friend, short for Karebear. it helped me find my uniqueness separate from family but without losing my love for them. all is not lost, only gained. you are right where you need to be at this moment…..thanks for dropping in on my blog (karen)

To be critical of a frail mother is touchy business. I wonder if like me, you'll reach a day when the sheer weight of her vulnerability, powerlessness and fear take over and all you feel is tenderness.

As usual, your words always leave me with a trail of thoughts. This time on motherhood and how I had to piecemeal it together. Not having a mother I could at least say – I'm not doing it HER way – I just sort of made it up as I went along. Not always successfully, I might add.

I like the idea of a book with a chapter dedicated to each sibling of one large family. I wonder if there are examples out there?

I had a vivid dream about my mother last night, or the night before. No, I don't remember the details. Just that we were arguing. We had plenty of disagreements while she was alive, although, thankfully, we disagreed on little of a moral, religious, or political nature. Our fights were more personality based. I think I've never laughed so hard as I did with my mother when we found something hilarious. I miss that.

I am moved by your description of your Mother's letters. I would give anything for just one more guilt trip. I was named Jane, but I always wanted a fancy name, like Elizabeth, or Gwendolyn, or Juliet. My Mother's name was Donna, for her father, who died before she was born. His name was Donald. There was a story there. I think I was named for nothing special, just plain old Jane.

I like your phrase "psychological sandwich" ~ I hear a poem in there. If anything comes of that, I'll send it to you. Your name, Elisabeth, with the "s," is the name I chose for my own daughter. I chose it for its meaning: consecrated to God, or an offering to God, or blessed by God. At the time I fiercely believed that we ARE our names. My daughter was a gift and I wanted to acknowledge the spiritual nature of her birth. I laugh a little now at the heavy symbolism in my philosophy as a younger woman. Ordinary life is rich enough to satisfy my needs. But my daughter does have a strong spiritual/intuitive/empathetic streak in her. Mothers and daughters are the mother lode of life. (I just took note of that sentence and burst out laughing! I can't take myself seriously anymore this evening.) Imeant only that the weight, history, dynamic, of mother/daughter relationships make for an endlessly interesting source of discussion and art.

I could read you into infinity! I LOVE your writing and would love to have you go on for ever! The name tradition in your family is curious to me- At first I thought perhaps they lack imagination and the sir name is not enough to "clan" you all but then I remembered that nearly every male member of my family is Pader or Peter depending in which country they are living.My parents are both dead- I am free to write about them though I mostly write about my father- Our relationship was complex- writing about him clarifies it a bit.LOVE your blog! Love your writing!

Becoming a grandmother is something else again, TaraDharma. I was surprised when it happened to me at 55. Then my mother reminded me she was only forty five when she first became a grandmother, as if our age at certain milestones becomes a boast.

Certainly for my mother the numbers of her children, her grandchildren and more recently, her great grandchildren are her greatest claims to fame.

She will tell you herself: nine children, twenty three grand children and at the moment she waits on her seventh and eight great grandchildren, yet to be born in May and July this year. My oldest daughter is pregnant for a second time and one of my nieces for the first time.

Talk about a population explosion and my mother loves it.

I have more mixed feelings. But it offers a sense of the cycle of life, a great comfort as Nancy Miller implies in her book, a comfort that she and many others cannot share.

I like to think that life offers many comforts, including the having of children.

There are many ways to be creative. I do not want to lay claim to my children as my greatest achievement. I think they are their own achievement. My husband and I have helped along the way, but I have long felt I am merely a statistic in my mother's list of babies and I don't want to inflict the sense of being one of many onto my own children and grandchildren.

Well, my comment to TaraDharma above could equally apply to you, Ruth, grandmother again, I imagine, or is it your first?

Choosing names is such a joy. I remember it well when I was pregnant, trillion out a new name, rolling it around on my tongue, trying to fit it to the baby to come, discussing it with my husband and then for us, as soon as each of our daughters appeared, so too did the name.

It was as if the names we had considered crystallised at that moment of birth and we knew for each of them, which name to choose.

You picked it, Kath. I have more 'unresolved' issues with my father than with my mother, but my relationship with my mother is more complex because it was and is better than the one I had with my father.

As for your experience with your mother, it's intriguing that these difficulties have trickled through to the next generation. More unresolved issues, presumably in your mother that she should pass it on to your daughter.

I don't know of any books like the one I'd imagined Glenn. I wish it could happen, but my siblings and I are too diverse and strong minded, I suspect t pull it off. Such a book requires cooperation and maybe an outsider to co-ordinate and edit.

Your dream sounds promising. A pity you don't remember it.

I don't dream of my mother as often as I remember dreaming of my father, but you never know. We dream but all too soon forget our dreams. It must have been good to be able to laugh so heartily with your mother. I'm not sure my mother and I could. We tend to the more serious.

I have never thought of my mother as Machiavellian, Laoch. If she is, and by this I assume you refer to what I experience as her manipulative tendencies, I doubt that she's aware of it.

I think it's more a feature of women of her generation, women who were so thoroughly dis empowered that they could only get what they wanted by stealth and subterfuge. They could never ask outright for what they might want. They had to trick others into giving it to them so as not to offend.

Also there's the advantage: if you don't ask, you won't be disappointed if you don't get what you want, and if you happen to get what you want, via manipulation, then there's no real need to be grateful because you did not ask for it in the first place.

I have a friend who calls herself Janey. It has a completely different ring to the simple name, Jane. More character perhaps.

Even so I've always liked the name 'Jane'. Perhaps because when I was young one of my best friends was a Jane. She had a double barreled surname because her parents were killed at a train crossing when she was small and she was adopted by an aunt.

She was such an interesting person, my friend, Jane, and her name seemed to match her personality.

I'm honoured to share my name with your daughter, Enchanted Oak and to also be 'promised to God', not that I have ever felt that way. My name is so confused in my mind with my mother's that I sometimes 'cannot see the wood for the trees'.

Hey, Elisabeth!I am glad that you find me!My english is not so good, but I read a lot in english! I am trying to improve that! I have a lot of friends in this world (and our commun language is english)!So, say hello to Alberto, I feel sorry I cannot help him with his problems!I will back come here to your place, to read!I wish you a great weekend!Thank you!

I know fashionista chickies tinker with their names thinking it will turn them into something they're not. My dopey social worker niece even changed the pronunciaion of her dead Grandmother's name from Clara ("Claira")into "Clarhrah". What an idiot.There's jealousy between mothers and daughters, mainly coming from the mother, and especially when the daughter is sexually attractive. Some mothers even get fixated on it. A woman I knew had a 'talking pillow' which said to her at night: "You're old, haggard, horrible; but your daughter is beautiful!" It got so bad she needed psychiatric help. I miss the years when my daughter was very young and dependant on me, before she grew up and I had to let her go, entering a world that to a large extent wiped out illusions we both had. I miss the make-believe, the fantasy.When someone dies you feel sorry about it, even if they were bastards alive. I never feel that way about my daddy. I didn't find out he'd died until about ten years afterward. Or I'd have been glad to kick him into his hole and cover it over: buried rubbish.

It sounds like your mother has been reading those "feedback techniques" essays which suggest starting with something good, then saying the bad stuff in the middle, and finishing on a happier note again…

I am ripe with loving your honesty of losing your way in this post. If you pick up once again on the sandwich, I would love to read it meandering off in a different direction. Imagine one day of clarity in which the first part of this post can be laid down again, and you will write an entirely different middle and end. This in itself is so interesting.

And too, just now in reading this, I am having a strange moment of seeing. Maybe because I am just up, it is deathly cold here, and I am in great need of coffee, but somehow it is like hands coming between me and a shadow me about to fight, like motherly hands, and I am seperated from myself, and for a moment I se mothering, parenting, as such an unusual construct, and really, rather a lie. Here we are, such imperfect and fallible beings, thrust into these roles because of biology, when we are on our own journeys of growth. At what point are we qualified to be parents, the leaders of our children? Never, really, but we live inside of a myth, both as the children of parents, and then as parents, as well. We are all blundering along.

Yes, one day my children will dissect my role, my motivations, my failures and successes, and even now I know they will get so much of it wrong. We do not see one another as people entirely, but we see the role and the connection between our roles. It is all rather curious. I feel as though I have fallen down the rabbit hole.

thank you for this postwhat a wonderful place to arrive at, or rather, get lost to.

The concept you had of the book was a great one, I think. The fascinating part for me was to hear how your mother had metamorphosed several times and your musing as to whether your view of her might therefore change after her death. My guess is that it will not – but then, what do I know? Only that it made a fascinating post.

Really interesting. I'm fascinated by names and naming. I lost my Mum last year, when I was 28. I know this will affect me in ways I don't even have a grasp of yet. And just today, I've been thinking about what I'd call a daughter if I have one, and if I'd use my Mum's name at all, before I even read this post. Odd.

As someone who feels like I don't have a family (not in a traditional sense) I'm always looking for connections, and it's very attractive, the idea of calling my daughter something that is representative of my Mum, as if it could link all three of us together.

I think I may only have received one letter from my mother – ever. I still have it. It’s in a shoebox on top of the wardrobe in my office. At least I thought that’s where it was. I’ve just checked but it wasn’t with all the other letters I’ve kept. I wanted to check but I think I have the subject right in my head: she sent it just after Carrie and I moved in together telling me not to bring her to see her because we weren’t married and hence living in sin and the fact is that she never did meet Carrie until after we were married some five months later; she did not attend the wedding. She had nothing against Carrie. In fact it was only Carrie and I who were there when she died and my mum called her “my angel” for looking after her so well.

I have my father’s name and had I had a son he would also have been named James but there was no way I was calling my daughter Florrie which was my mother’s name, not Florence – she was named after the singer Florrie Forde, the Australian singer would you believe.

When I first started writing my new book, Left, I had imagined that I would draw on my own relationship with my father but reading the finished manuscript a couple of days ago (at least as finished as it will be till Carrie comes back from the States and can let me have her input) I see little of him there at all and the same goes for my mother. The book began life as an exploration of the grieving process but since I have no grief to draw on I’ve had to modify it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t miss my parents but I’ve never felt bereft.

Like the protagonist says in the book:

Loss is when you miss something you once had. What I found myself missing was something else. I missed what we would never have the opportunity to have even though I knew full well neither of us would have made any real effort to move towards it. It. The word we use when using the right one would make reality that bit too real. Words are so inadequate. Maybe that’s why we have so many of them and we insist on inventing new words. How can you miss what you never had? I’d lost my dad. Big deal! People lose things every day. I didn’t do it deliberately. Grow up woman.

My mother was an idealist – all religious people are – but she never idealised me. From my youngest days she was always aware that I was not a conformist by nature and so, although my life choices have frequently disappointed her I don’t think any have especially surprised her. She made no great effort to get me to return to the fold but she was never shy about pointing out what she saw as my failings although, as I have said, only once did she ever put them in writing.

With my mother no longer able to do any of her manipulative games with me, it has given be the ability to be free. Free! I am no longer in fear of her or the strings she loved to attach to everything. Pleasing mother's who have no idea what it means to ask such demands on a child, a young girl and then a woman, only makes that girl run away…physically or in their mind.

Names…yes..I have my mother's middle name and I did pass that name onto my middle daughter. My niece by marriage uses it as well for her daughter but changed the spelling.

out of 100 books on parents 90 are about mothers. Any insult to father is taken with a pinch of salt but insult to a mother is never tolerated, we fight back, anywhere in the world, in all cultures, though fathers get more prominence in Islamic culture.

Now i see the difference between the children of a non working mother and a working mother, who couldn't spend much time with their children. The bond gets thinner.

The notion of the psychological sandwich can take us in many and varying directions, Erin, as you suggest.

Strange as it may seem, most writing roads for me lead me back to childhood.

Maybe it's because I am essentially a non-fiction writer, though one of my writing friends says I should take my fiction writing more seriously, but writing fiction never gives the thrill that non- fiction offers.

Maybe I'm more like Helen Garner, a well known Australian writer, who writes fiction she says that is close to her experience, so close that sometimes as readers we find it hard to tell one apart from the other.

To me the difference between fiction writing and non-fiction might have parallels with the separation between mothers and daughters. We never quite manage it. One always informs the other no mater how distant or close.

There are many who would argue that our perceptions of our parents alter after death, Dave

Do you remember your own experience of your parents before and after?

I wonder how it will be for me. People often change their perspective on people generally after death.

As soon as they die, the idealising, the eulogising begins or maybe its opposite occasionally, the vilifying. It's hard to keep a balanced perspective. Once someone's dead they can't speak up for themselves and alter our views on them.

Hey Jim, another thought, the sadness in your quote here is gut wrenching, coming from the hardheaded cynic that is your character.

You can miss something you never had, I suspect, when you see others with it. You miss it in your imagination. A bit like my husband's colour blindness. He's never known otherwise and to that extent doesn't miss colour, but he knows others have more. He misses that.

I'm glad you found the book suggestion, helpful, Ellen. It's a terrific book.

And it's great that you are now able to feel free from your mother's manipulations.

To some extent I think I have managed to do so, too, but it goes up and down. My mother's needy gestures can still hook into my guilt. And that's the worst of it. Guilt does not make for a sense of freedom.

I agree relationships between mothers and daughters are complicated, seemingly more so than relationships between fathers and their sons, but not I suspect compared to cross gender parent/child relationships. Of course, all this is a case of serious generalising, but don't we love to do that in blogdom?

Ah my first name is maria as well and the second indeed after my mothers mother. Hendrina and the third Elisabeth. I never thought much about the names as they only appeared on my pasport and that was it. My kids haven't got birthnames for just that reason.I have had a complicated relationship with my mother for a while but she mellowed a lot as she got older and me probably as well. She is a darling now.

Rauf, I checked this out: Mario is a name that derives from Marius meaning 'manly' and although there's some suggestion that Mary is the female version of Mario, Mary and with it Maria, both mean 'star of the sea'. To me the names are very different.

I agree with you about your notion that large numbers of children, and the chronic unavailability of mothers who must work too many hours, can thin the bond between mothers and their children. What a wonderful way of putting it.

I am constantly amazed at the quality or writing I read online, I wouldn't let myself see it at first (how talented you are with written words) because it seems many of your topics are not the easiest ones to examine in each of our lives.

Thank you for having the courage to examine them, and for being such a skilled writer that I continue reading them.

Many days I feel the greatest tragedies in this world is when somebody believes it is not OK to be who they truly are. I know in my heart that such a flawed belief is not an inherent emotion nor is it the result of any natural progression.

The saddest part is some person go their entire life, never understanding it IS OK TO BE WHOEVER THEY TRULY ARE. And that if I am not thoughtful with my words I can very easily implant such destructive, negative, horribly wrong thoughts into young peoples' minds, doing it with good intentions.

Only persons who are hurting in the worst kind of ways, get lost enough to commit acts of evil against others.

Inadvertently influencing a person's beliefs, that lead them to hate who they are, is the most destructive thing anyone can do while having good intentions.

It may very well also be the most destructive thing anyone can do with bad intentions.

I hope everyone gives some serious thought on how we may directly or indirectly influence others beliefs.

Yours is a lovely full name, Marja. I particularly like your first name and Hendrina, a variation on Henrietta or Henry, I suppose. I say that because I have a cousin named Hendricus, a good old Dutch name. His mother called him Drikkus. I'm not sure of the spelling.

Again you are fortunate that your relationship with your mother is now at peace, as it were.

Your kind words make me wonder more about you. Your posts are cryptic and lead me into strange places.

I always imagine my writing is self evident, but perhaps it is not. I try to write into my own truths as you do, but we are worlds apart, most likely on other sides of the world, and perhaps generations apart, too.

Still I'm very very pleased to meet you here and I shall try to decipher your communications, Who. And I thank you for trying to decipher mine, too.

Though I'm not much of a letter writer, I see the advantages, even if you live close by the person you're writing to. The advantages are those that you get with any type of writing. No one interrupts you. You're not distracted by whatever expression (anger, boredom, etc.) that's on the other person's face. And finally, you can write and re-write a letter, until you think you've got it right, whereas verbal communication is always a first draft.

You wonder if you'll write differently about your mother after you're gone. I'm assuming you're currently holding something back so as not to hurt her feeling. But once your mother's gone, you'll still have all those brothers and sisters. Might you not hold back anyway to avoid friction with them? Just a thought.

I was named after a once-famous movie star. When I asked my mother if she was a fan of this particular actor, she said no, she didn't particularly like his movies, she just liked his name, which she had never heard of before he became well known.

Dear Lis, as you know, my relationship with my mother is a very complicated matter. This tiny woman still fills the room from wall-to-wall, roaring or such is my take on her. I've talked much with Kass about her mother's dying and death last year, and I've read much of what you have written about your mother. You each seem to have landed or are aimed for a place of peace and resolution about mothers and the shadows they cast upon us.I am not as hopeful for myself. I don't know that I'll ever sort it out and I'm not entirely certain that to do so is one of my deepest needs. You used the sandwich analogy. My mother and I would be macaroni and cheese. One fears plunging a spoon in for fear of breaking the delicate pasta shells or causing a string of the cheese to be pulled apart.

I was given a small part of my mother's name for my middle name, which I detest. When my daughter was born, I gave her the newest, free-est, breeziest, most meaningful name I could think of – she loves her name as I have always disliked both of mine.

My first name is my own, but my middle names belong to my grandmothers. A glance through my family tree shows many generations of Emma's and Maria's, Bernhard's and Josef's. I broke tradition with my children.

That's my take on letter writing, too, Kirk. No one answers back, no one interrupts you. You can say everything you want to say without taking a breath.

Conversations are not like that, and as you say they're usually first drafts, but conversations can take you to places that you least expect sometimes more so than even in letter writing because there are two of you in conversation, not one.

Letter writing is aways a tad one sided, but still I love it.

And yes, you're right, even after my mother's gone, I have my sisters and brothers to contend woth.

To me Kirk is a lovely name, filled with character and strength. I'm assuming Kirk is your real name.

I broke from tradition with my children, too, River, apart from the recurring Elisabeth.

There are so many Elisabeths in my family tree on both sides, but then again it's not such an unusual name. I tried to get original with my daughters' names without being over the top. You, too by the sound of things.

I like the idea that your mother wrote letters to you; as you say, it was the way which she most likely thought she could compose and present her case.

But my mother as well had the tendency to pretend that things were well when they were not. I believe that is a product of their generation. I recall my mother lecturing me on how faithful my father had been to her. Later my father admitting to me that he had visited prostitutes. Between them the illusion that "all is well" seemed paramount.

I love your blog and would never venture to offer anything that would smack of criticism, but really, you need never end a blog with an apology.

Psychological sandwich is a great term, my mother did something similar, though orally. I never knew if she did it to sugar the pill or to protect herself from the anger she thought her criticism might cause. In my teens and twenties I was driven insane by her, but by my thirties I just thought she was bonkers and let whatever she said slide. Luckily as I neared forty some kind of shift took place in our relationship, I don't know why but we both started to listen to each other, and she began to see the value of other perspectives. Anyway, by the time she died, two days after my forty-fifth birthday, we were back to the friends we'd been when I was a child.

My brother's middle name is Hilary, which always made me laugh when I was little.

Your post brings up an interesting question. My father died when I was fourteen, before I started to battle with his old fashioned strictness. I am the youngest and for a very long time I idealized him. Since he died when I was a child, I kept my child's view. It took decades to see him as a whole flawed but basically good human being. My Mother and I are another very long story, let's just say that now that she has been gone for a decade too, I am coming to terms. She was a strong and interesting woman, but she did not really know how to be a mother. Thanks for getting the old thoughts rolling.Kat

The illusion that all is well, is a powerful one, Robert and I agree with you it might well be a feature of our parent's generation, a way of keeping things going, in spite of their awfulness in days when divorce and the like were not so acceptable as today.

I'd almost like to say sorry for the 'sorry'. It's a bit of a joke in our household, this tendency to say sorry almost by default. In some ways it's not so much an apology as an offer of regret.

So who's the Hilary for, Eryl. It seems a very odd choice for a boy, unless it is a family surname.

It's good you and your mother were able to get on again before her death. It seems so important. One of my brothers was warring with my father before our father's death and I don't think it has helped this brother in later years – too many regrets.

The death of my most recent parent was nearly 20 years ago, so I rarely have an interest in writing about either of them. Maybe that's how it is with most people, although I did read a couple of books recently (the author only wrote three) by Moritz Thomsen. His last one was entitled "My Two Wars," and it was about World War II and about his relationship with his father who had been long since dead. I must confess that I couldn't see how his relationship with his father was on a par with WWII, although to him it was probably harder to live with, even in his old age. I find not having parents to be somewhat of a relief, although I do miss them. After all, it's my turn to die now.

My mother used to write letters to me while we were living under one roof. She wrote in the same style as your mom. Maybe it was what they were taught? Even as she was on her death bed she still found word to scold me, a mom myself! But I forgave her. The yardstick she used to measure my shortcomings was the same she used on herself. She came from a very strict Prussian background and never allowed herself to become very tender and affectionate except with her cat. Still I loved her. But I am different with my own daughters. Times have changed and I'm glad that we can be close, frank and still very affectionate.

You're right I suspect, Kleinstemotte, your mother and her Prussian background, mine with her Dutch Catholic upbringing, though my mother was able to be more demonstrably loving than yours by the sound of things.

Even so it's good we can change as parents over the generations otherwise life would get terribly stuck.

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My name is Elisabeth. This blog is my attempt to find a voice after a childhood of silence. I began it in 2006, in the middle of writing for a PhD on the topic, ‘Life writing and the desire for revenge’. A blog seemed a good place in which I might explore ideas about autobiography, as well as practice my writing.